nurse

English Online Dictionary. What means nurse‎? What does nurse mean?

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: nûrs

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /nɜːs/
• (Standard Southern British) IPA^(key): /nɵːs/, /nəːs/ (weak vowel merger)
• (General American) IPA^(key): /nɝs/

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)s

Etymology 1

From Middle English norice, from Old French norrice, from Late Latin nūtrīcia, noun based on Latin nūtrīcius (“that which nourishes”), from nūtrīx (“wet nurse”), from nūtriō (“to suckle”).

Alternative forms

• norice, nourice, nourse (all obsolete)

Noun

nurse (plural nurses)

1. A person involved in providing direct care for the sick:
   1. (informal) Anyone performing this role, regardless of training or profession.

   2. A medical worker performing this role, typically someone trained to provide such care but having credentials and rank below a doctor or physician assistant.
   3. (healthcare) A medical worker, such as a registered nurse, having training, credentials, and rank above a nurse assistant.
2. A person (usually a woman) who takes care of other people’s children.

3. (figurative) One who, or that which, brings up, rears, causes to grow, trains, or fosters.
4. (horticulture) A shrub or tree that protects a young plant.
5. (nautical) A lieutenant or first officer who takes command when the captain is unfit for his place.
6. A larva of certain trematodes, which produces cercariae by asexual reproduction.
7. (archaic) A wet nurse.

Usage notes

• Some speakers consider nurses (medical workers) to be female by default, and thus use "male nurse" to refer to a man doing the same job.

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

Verb

nurse (third-person singular simple present nurses, present participle nursing, simple past and past participle nursed)

1. (transitive) To breastfeed: to feed (a baby) at the breast; to suckle.

   She believes that nursing her baby will make him strong and healthy.

2. (intransitive) To breastfeed: to be fed at the breast.
3. (transitive) To care for (someone), especially in sickness; to tend to.

4. (transitive) To tend gently and with extra care.

5. (transitive) To manage or oversee (something) with care and economy.

   Synonym: husband

7. (transitive, informal) To drink (a beverage) slowly, so as to make it last.

8. (transitive, figuratively) To cultivate or persistently entertain (an attitude, usually negative) in one's mind; to brood or obsess over.

   Synonyms: dwell on, feed, harbor
9. (transitive) To hold closely to one's chest.

10. (transitive, billiards) To strike (billiard balls) gently, so as to keep them in good position during a series of shots.

Usage notes

• In sense 6 "to drink slowly", generally negative and particularly used for someone at a bar, suggesting they either cannot afford to buy another drink or are too miserly to do so. By contrast, sip is more neutral.

Translations

Synonyms

• (drink slowly): sip; see also Thesaurus:drink

See also

• matron
• sister

Further reading

• “nurse”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “nurse”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “nurse”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Nurse in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Etymology 2

Uncertain; earlier (16th century) nusse, nuse. Perhaps from huss, through metanalysis of "an huss" as "a nuss".

Noun

nurse (plural nurses)

1. A nurse shark or dogfish.

Derived terms

• grey nurse
• grey nurse shark
• nurse shark

Anagrams

• Nuers, Suren, Unser, runes, urnes

Middle English

Noun

nurse

1. Alternative form of norice